Verses of My Everlast: A Queer Identity Etched in Ink

In pages, bound by aging seams and youth's decree,

Where words poured out in rush of passion's tide,

Now at four decades, I peruse and see

A younger self, in black ink, is implied.

Of innocence and longing once inscribed,

In fervent verse, on sex and fitting in,

Echoing queries and a self, prescribed,

Through prism of an era, yet to begin.

Emergent voice in dappled lines laid bare,

A nascent poet's heart in words confined,

Navigating the labyrinth of care,

Where woman's love for woman is enshrined.

Yet, reading now, the mirror holds me fast,

A narrative of self, from shadows cast.

A lesbian I was, and still remain,

Some truths of self, like blood, course through the vein,

And in these verses, youthful and untamed,

I see a heart that loved, and was unashamed.

Astonished now, not by the themes held dear,

But by the constancy of self laid clear.

In poems of sex, and struggling to belong,

I see a girl, courageous and strong.

A mirror held to past, reflecting light,

On how we change, yet stay the same in sight.

And in this silent room, age two-score,

I see myself, as never before.

In decades past, a burgeoning desire,

Now in middle age, an enduring fire.

Time has moved, and yet the heart still yearns,

In poetry of past, the present learns.

A youth in ink, an age in memory,

A lifetime penned in versed history.

Four decades on, in poems of the past,

I find my self, my now, my everlast.

© Susie Stiles-Wolf